


Shaving Scars

by charlesworthy



Category: Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 05:34:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13563942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlesworthy/pseuds/charlesworthy
Summary: Why Gen 2 Arvis still shaves





	Shaving Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thing for a friend. Still haven't beat FE4 so bear with me if its a little ooc

Arvis couldn't meet his own eyes in the mirror any more. In his youth, he'd had no problem. His eyes had been like fire behind glass. These days, they were just a bright red, somehow dull in comparison. He had, in some respects, come to terms with the fire inside him turning tame. He was now more like a few embers stuck in a hearth, alive only from the stubbornness of an outside hand.

In his youth, though, he'd seen the flames behind his eyes as another trait marking him as Fjalar-blooded. Like his hair or his ability with fire magic, it was just another significant mark of being born Velthomer. To see that the light had faded was as though some aspect of Fjalar had left him, and if he didn't have Fjalar, all he was left with was...

Well, what did it matter now, in a world like this?

Not much, admittedly. Even if the flame had died out, Arvis couldn't bring himself to roll over and accept the atrocities each new day saw pass. In comparison, shaving daily may have seemed pointless and superfluous. It was a ten minutes that could maybe be put to other things.

But there'd be questions that were harder to answer, in the weeks it would take him to go from clean-faced to the kind of beard that could hide the marks.

Julius dug his fingernails there, he drew blood, giggling gleefully when his fingers came away red. It had stung sharply, like a dagger, and like something deeper, because that was still Arvis' _son_...

Shaving was just an excuse. The thin line tracing down from the corner of his lip to his chin was more readily excused by a personal error shaving. A man of his age, in his shoes, having done what he's done, would understandably possess shaking hands.

He knew it's make though, and even if it hadn't resembled a cut that would scar, he'd remember.

The cuts varied, but they were from the same source. The lines leading from his laugh lines (an ironic name in retrospect) to his jaw were Julius' fingernails, but the cut underneath his cheekbone was a knife. A beard wouldn't even hide that. He'd have to part his hair differently, maybe cover one eye...

But it was just easier to blame those cuts on himself. After all, weren't they, either way, his mistake?

 


End file.
